It's a bleak, nihilistic affair, but dynamic enough never to lose its focus. [25 Feb 2012, p.52]

It’s a go-getter of a record that pays homage to the greats whilst still feeling brand new. YUNGBLUD’s outlandishness makes him a hard pill to swallow for some, but his guts, drive, and devotion to his craft cannot be denied.

In allowing their imaginations to run riot in a gloriously self-indulgent way, they've made a record possessed of an extremity all of its own. [5 May 2012, p.53]

L'Enfant Sauvage is staggering. [30 Jun 2012, p.52]

A fine album from an often overlooked band. [30 Jun 2012, p.53]

It's extreme in a way that corpse-painted clowns will never understand--but as an expression of raw, wounded humanity, it stands as Dir en Grey's most captivating, compelling and soulful release to date. [30 Jul 2011, p.50]

Relapse finds them wielding those familiar sledgehammer beats and streamlined thrash riffs in a most effective fashion. [7 Apr 2012, p.52]

Sure, the band haven't exactly come up trumps on originality here, but at least they're delivered some huge songs. [25 May 2013, p.54]

This is an excellent album in its own right, but ONE MORE TIME… also points to an even more exciting future for blink-182.

There will be doubters and there will be haters, but Heaven :x: Hell is Sum 41 at their zenith and is, without any shadow of a doubt, the album of their career.

For Deftones, finding the sweet spots between compromise and balance, factoring in each member’s duties and creative inputs may be a more appropriate way of assessing the delicacy of the task at hand. It’s within that push and pull, that the aptly-named, tension-charged Ohms proves itself a fascinating entry into the band’s canon.

Out of Ian’s time of crisis, Militarie Gun have made themselves a silver lining, a record that’s not just a tremendous step up but one that could be their defining moment.

life Cycle is the sound of [their] potential exploding into being. [30 Jun 2012, p.54]

They trash out a slew of throwaway instant classics and refresh a well-worn format for no better motive than the fact that they can. [30 Jul 2011, p.51]

Good Charlotte have written an album for the modern era: honest, powerful and, most importantly, real. [22 Sep 2018, p.54]

A few teething problems aside, Between The Stars is a brilliant reinvention. [1 Nov 2014, p.54]

So while this is a familiar, albeit more polished ride, it’s replete with beautiful moments, such as Black Crown and Gold Long Gone, that stay with you and work on you; it’s music that lovingly infiltrates hearts and minds rather than bludgeoning you over the head with its message.

It’s not just the righteous fury of the music that makes it so great, either – these are songs built on a truly wide world of extreme sounds, welded together into a unique sonic bomb.

The frontman himself proves he can actually sing in places but there's also a full quota of lung-bursting, chest-beating hardcore to remind us who this is and prevent things from ever straying too far afield. [23 Jul 2011, p.51]

Good lord, what a voice Chris Cornell has - rich, bruised, defiant, fragile and strong, be bends it to his will. On Songbook ... [his voice] carries the album as it stands starkly against his simple guitar backing. [Nov. 19, 2011p. 51]

It's a deceptively simple formula, but one that Torche continue to twist into intriguing and utterly addictive shapes. [31 Jan 2015, p.54]

This is a wholly disturbing listen. [6 Dec 2014, p.54]

Their sharpest, biggest and best album to date. [7 May 2016, p.51]

It's truly impressive stuff, and a reminder of just how good they are. [7 Apr 2012, p.51]

It's hard not to get swept along by the torrent of farce and sheer loose-footed skill on show. [30 Jul 2011, p.52]

This is what it sounds like when Poppy is properly in her element. When she’s got something that lights her on fire, she’s unstoppable, and this is how she’s been able to write possibly her best songs yet.

What saves these confessions from self-loathing is how Diet Cig dance the line between serious and funny wonderfully. [8 May 2017, p.66]

It broadens and deepens the story that began with that album [Sex, Death & The Infinite Void], acting as a requiem to the alien character of Roe. ... It’s simply eight tracks of lovely, rousing rock opera. Whether you’re after one, the other, or both, you’re sure to be left more than satisfied.

Taken on its own merits, this is still a stunning album from a band operating at the peak of their powers. [18 May 2013, p.52]

The riff were plenty and more focused than ever before. [2 Aug 2014, p.54]

While much of the record sounds like the Rolling Stones if they'd grown up as LA punks instead of English art students. Superb. [27 Aug 2011, p.52]

What unites all six fantastically constructed pieces on this album is the sound of a band delivering on their potential, and then some. [Nov. 19, 2011 p. 52]

This is easily the best punk album of 2014. [8 Nov 2014, p.54]

It's a welcome return to form, and a contender for the best thing this band have ever done. [18 Sep 2010, p.57]

This time, La Dispute prove that less is definitely more. [15 Mar 2014, p.54]

It’s a bold, fresh effort full of tunes that are simultaneously immediate and deep.

Creeper have always been great. But in this current (and unexpectedly elongated) vampire phase, they’ve blossomed into their true, proper selves.

This is a more organic effort. [28 Sep 2013, p.52]

What You Don't See holds up its end of the bargain, with rattlegun rhythms, sun-kissed melodies and enough grit in the guitars and frontman Parker Cannon's vocals to offset any saccharine edges. [16 Mar 2013, p.54]

It's a bit rawer, significantly darker and a lot more Momsenier. [15 Mar 2014, p.53]

What Blues Pills serve up, like The White Stripes or Rival Sons before them, is a perfect transmission of warm rock’n’roll from a time gone by that effortlessly slinks along with natural swagger, without ever feeling studied.

At an hour-and-a-quarter, like its predecessor, 72 Seasons is a lot to cram in in one go, a marathon. But it slaps consistently, and hard.

The classy atmosphere of Hisingen Blues makes Graveyard sound timeless rather than retrogressive, and wholly relevant in 2011. [14 May 2011, p.51]

Despite the band stretching their boundaries wider than ever before and employing a kitchen-sink approach to experimentation, this is the most Enter Shikari sounding record the band have made to date.

Twilight sound astonishingly cold here. [15 Mar 2014, p.55]

As with the original, Black Stallion is an album of competing extremities held together in a state of perfect equilibrium. It is certainly true that White Pony needed no augmentation. In its original incarnation it sounds as breathtaking and innovative now as it did in June 2000. To weigh Black Stallion against it would not only be unfair, but also miss the point. What we have here is a whole new set of parallel hoof prints to marvel at.

An EP that's more than a stopgap, Polymers ... refines the ex-McClusky men's sound without making it boring. [Nov. 19, 2011 p.52]

They sound more surefooted. [26 May 2012, p.52]

While Shapeshifter isn't a complete transformation, it is a confident and relatable expedition through adolescence. [14 Oct 2017, p.53]

It's a collection of eight good and great Foo Fighters songs. [15 Nov 2014, p.52]

The many moods of South Of Reality are both rewarding and unsettling, as if the music exists on shifting sands, and as the work of two wide and creative imaginations, it's tough to beat. [23 Feb 2019, p.55]

Gloriously triumphant, weirdly exhilarating and entirely engrossing, Sunn O))) have created something genuinely brilliant here.

Less the raised middle finger of old, this is more a clicking one, trying to snap you out of whatever Big Brother fug you may have settled for. [14 Feb 2015, p.54]

Everything fizzes and bursts and explodes with neon delight that sounds, genuinely, like nothing else on earth, but has a delight to it that's oh so familiar. [5 Oct 2019, p.53]

10 short, smart nuggests of power-pop perfection. [22 Sep 2018, p.55]

Dear Youth will stomp your head and fire your heart. [15 Nov 2014, p.54]

It absolutely borrows plenty from all of Brendon’s influences – but that’s not a bad thing. Viva Las Vengeance is both consistently catchy and classic-sounding, and another fine addition to Panic!’s remarkably varied discography.

YPLL exceeds expectations, Retox ramping up the frenzy with catchier riffs and a more focused assault on musical convention. [18 May 2013, p.54]

It's adventurous, daring, different. [7 Feb 2015, p.54]

[The diversity of genres] proves a welcome alternative to COTV's more genre-bound contemporaries,e even if the furious freneticism of grind anchors their sound with a clear sense of identity. [16 Mar 2013, p.55]

[The] band's strange brew is as striking as ever it was, and is no less potent for being restrained by both taste and age. [15 Oct 2011, p.51]

This is an AC/DC record as lusty as they come. [22 Nov 2014, p.50]

Too countrified for you r average black metal fan, Blackberry Smoke are nevertheless as warming as rock gets. [7 Feb 2015, p.54]

Occasionally this album is just as you might expect, raucous and raw, but elsewhere it is the work of people who seem unafraid to sound afraid. A gem. [6 Nov 2010, p.52]

This won’t be an album for everyone. But for those with an appreciation for the cold, dark and depraved, it’s a hellscape worth falling into.

Counterparts have delivered one for the heart here, not the head. [20 Jul 2013, p.54]

There's no softness or subtlety here. Just venom-tipped steel. [29 Oct 2016, p.52]

If your taste in music runs to bands that are very much one of a kind then this odd and oddly loveable album might well be to your liking. [Sep 2011, p.52]

Whereas Puscifer's early output exercised his funny bone, the rather brilliant Conditions Of My Parole exorcises it. [15 Oct 2011, p.52]

This most powerful of trios churn up tumultuous fury not unlike tribal-metallers Neurosis. [14 Feb 2015, p.54]

Wolverines is a masterclass in quality pop-punk. [15 Mar 2014, p.53]

The heaviest and catchiest thing the Washingtonians have unleashed--and the most moving, too. [23 Jul 2016, p.52]

Linkin Park's fourth album plots a remarkable course. It is, in fact, nothing less than the sound of their hybrid theory soaring to its logical conclusion. [11 Sep 2010, p.50]

The beauty of Puscifer is that they can be taken any way you like depending on how you look at them. It is more than enough that the music on Existential Reckoning is superb. But should you attempt to get under the skin and solve the puzzles within, there are vast riches to be had.

Their career trajectory continues its upward arc--but with City of Vultures, Rise To Remains have stamped on the accelerator. [3 Sep 2011, p.50]

Against The Current have made the record they've been threatening to do so for years. [7 May 2016, p.40]

What's most impressive is the sense of personal innovation, and WITTR's willingness to follow their vision wherever it may roam. [12 Jul 2015, p.54]

A solo album that is both deceptively effervescent and dependably well executed. [9 Feb 2019, p.55]

Grinderman 2 proves that this bunch of hirsute, middle-aged reprobates are making some of the most unsettling-yet-addictive rock music of the age. [25 Sep 2010, p.52]

Smart, confident and put together with a real sense of intrigue, WILLOW’s latest record is a testament to having the belief to forge your own path. As coping mechanisms go, this one sounds like a winner.

Little has changed. [8 May 2017, p.69]

The result is a fresh, pavement-referencing quirk on tracks Like Son Of A Gun and Boxelder. [2 Jun 2012, p.52]

The Maniacs prove persuasive enough to bring you round to their way of thinking. [12 Jul 2014, p.54]

Japandroids' ability to move the listener remains as powerful as ever. [4 Feb 2017, p.51]

Alive with the freshness and vitality of rebirth, they've delivered 11 tracks that manage to bridge the vast airiness of their mid-'00s heyday and the poppy progression of here and now. [25 Feb 2017, p.52]

Invented is a return to the creative peaks of yore. It's a record rich with twinkling sonic subtleties, timeless melodies and characteristically layered, epic tunes. [25 Sep 2010, p.52]

Dead Set On Living is raw, visceral and an antidote to the glossy sounds and polished looks that abound right now. [114 2012, p.52]

This most stylish and once troubled of bands sound like artists still in search of something new. And this new album is well worth the wait. [15 Jan 2010, p.52]

It's hard to imagine a more enchanting soundtrack to the summer. [24 Aug 2019, p.55]

It's a fuzzed-out, heavy-arsed, thoroughly soulful blast of glorious rock thunder that salutes the past with one arm, while bringing in an ultra-cool identity of Rival Sons' own with the other. [9 Feb 2019, p.55]

It's an album that bristles with hooks, crackles with power and almost overflows with passion. [22 Apr 2017, p.50]

This is how you do post-hardcore in 2013 without sounding like a relic. [23 Mar 2013, p.54]

This continues to be the same DragonForce you either love or laugh at, but on The Power Within they've honed their sound to absolute perfection. [14 Apr 2012, p.53]

As Hardcore closes, it beats its chest too, the subtleties of the album's earlier songs unfurled into those wonderful dramas of old. [12 Feb 2011, p.52]

As a QOTSA album, In Times New Roman… is dark and disorientating; for Joshua Homme, it feels like a wholly necessary outpouring of creative catharsis.

The Incessant is an enraged punk album with the occasional sombre stupor slinked within. [18 Feb 2017, p.54]

BMTH have long known how to play what cards when, and just when we need something cathartic, something heavy, something with an element of the familiar in amongst the creativity, they deliver richly here. Fourteen years on from their debut, much has changed, but in some other ways some things are exactly the same.

This blend of grace and discord never feels jarring, combining to produce an immersive, transcendental whole which reveals the true breadth of this duo's impressive artistry. [Sep 2011, p.51]